Thank You for Smoking

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Summary: Thank you for writing...
Review: Thank You for Smoking should be banned from public places since the amount of laughter it engenders is hazardous to public sanity. I was reading the book on the subway when I came to tobacco flackman Naylor's Nuremburg "paying ze mortgage" defense. Given my rather audible reaction, I was lucky not to have been thrown off the train. But if laughter is the best medicine, this sharp satire should be required reading for all smokers.

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Summary: The funniest man alive!
Review: Completely hilarious and far more insightful about contemporary politics than anything you'll find on the editorial page.

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Summary: A primer in pretzel logic
Review: A fun romp through the sleazy corridors of influence peddling. Squinting sideways at these shenanigans in Foggy Bottom, one wonders: "Is this our hallowed capitol, or a bazaar in Marrakesh?" William F should be proud.

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Summary: P.J O'Rourke meets Tom Wolfe - Hysterical
Review: Witty and urbane, Thank You For Smoking never lets up on the satire. I found myself laughing out loud. Geneticists now have proof that cynic eloquence is hereditary. Characters well developed. Plot is fast moving and easily readable. Love at first puff. Darrell Hawkin

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Summary: Great fun to read aloud
Review: Having heard about the book here and there, I finally got my hands on a copy. I started reading it and found bits to read out loud to my husband because they were too funny to keep to myself, and then I just kept reading, and now I have to wait until after dinner to keep going. It is a fun book because it is well written, and you love to hate the main character, while being sympathetic all at the same time. I have already reccommended it to several people

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Summary: "The Dilbert Principle" meets "The Jungle"
Review:

Somehow, I've always imagined that a p.r. rep for the tobacco lobby would have to be a heartless bastard. Well, Christopher Buckley has proven me right. Nick Taylor is definitely a heartless bastard. He just happens to be a likable heartless bastard.

If this was a Victorian novel, Nick would be the arch-villain, spending his time trying to ruin Christmas for the children of the world, or stealing the farm from the dying father of some frightened heroine. Instead, Buckley has cast Nick in modern times, a fighter for the rights of the giant tobacco companies to peddle their product to an increasingly savvy and health-aware public.

Nick is the embodiment of all our fears of corporate America's disinterest in the public welfare, with his disregard for the scientific community's "datum" about smoking-related deaths and parent's concern over advertising aimed at children. But somehow Buckley manages convince us that Nick is just a working dad trying to pay the mortgage, all the while fighting off attempts by his latest boss to replace him with a younger, hipper and less expensive version of himself. When this ousting is foiled by a wildly successful appearance on Oprah and a series of high-profile escapades, Nick is quickly caught in the corporate grinder which is all too familiar to the white collar worker of the 1990's.

This book is a keeper, one which you'll be passing around to everyone in the office (after you've put your name in the front cover, to make sure everyone knows who read it first...). This is the type of book that will leave everyone else on the train wondering if you're reading something really funny or you're clinically insane, since you can't help but laughing out loud. I'd give this book a ten, but I'm hoping that Buckley comes out with another book soon to top this one.

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Summary: Media manipulation explained to the unenlightened.
Review: As a marketing educator, I found this book entertaining and hilarious. The subject matter could be required reading for business students and particularly marketing professionals. It's nice to see how others may view us from time to time

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Summary: Unengaging
Review: I was hoping I'd like this satirical novel. But two chapters in, and it just wasn't up to the standard of Max Barry or Ben Elton, so I gave up. (DNF)

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Summary: Great satire, so-so thriller
Review: Nick Naylor, the protagonist of Christopher Buckley's "Thank You for Smoking," gives new definition to the term "antihero." Despite his position, he's not really a bad guy. Sure, he makes six figures a year lying through his teeth as the chief lobbyist at the Academy of Tobacco Studies in Washington, but he's not really making anybody smoke cigarettes. As he explains it, he's just moderating between two competing groups, namely the cigarette companies and the anti-smoking zealots. Besides, someone's got to pay the mortgage and his son's prep-school tuition. Even he realizes that his rationalization sounds like something a Nuremberg defendant might say ("I vas only paying ze mortgage"), but it takes a certain courage to go on TV and say there's no demonstrable link between smoking and disease. Perhaps Buckley's greatest achievement here is that he can take a guy who lies to sell cigarettes and make him into a sympathetic figure.

Nick Naylor's life provides the basis for Buckley's often hilarious look at the "neo-puritanism" of mid-nineties America and the attempts of tobacco companies to fight it. And although I hate cigarettes, I think a book like this needed to be written. Anybody who's ever been repulsed by those ridiculous "Truth" ads where a bunch of obnoxious young people harass those who make and sell cigarettes should get a good laugh at Buckley's portrayal of the sanctimonious forces of political correctness. As Nick tells Oprah Winfrey in one uproarious scene, cigarette opponents aren't above manipulating children and trying to tell everyone else how to think. And anything that takes the wind out of the sails of political correctness is fine by me.

Much of the book's humor comes from Nick's lunch meetings with his friends in the Mod (an acronym for "Merchants of Death") Squad. Composed of Nick, alcohol lobbyist Polly Bailey, and one-armed gun advocate Bobby Jay Bliss, the Mod Squad is sort of a combination support group and mutual admiration society. In the presence of their own, the three death merchants can work on their PR strategies, discuss their latest misfortunes at the hands of the neo-puritans, and compare just how much death they've caused and how hated they are. In one particularly humorous scene, Polly and Bobby Jay are saying how much hate mail they get, and Nick just scoffs and says, "HATE mail? ALL of my mail is hate mail."

Of course, even satires need plots, so Buckley throws in some intrigue regarding a plot to have Nick killed. When a team of killers kidnaps Nick and covers him in nicotine patches, Nick finds himself suspected by the FBI of having done the deed himself as a PR stunt. In an effort to clear his name, Nick eventually traces the attempt on his life to a conspiracy in the upper levels of the tobacco lobby. Although this plot had possibilities, it felt somewhat underdeveloped to me. At a mere 272 pages, "Thank You for Smoking" isn't quite long enough to function effectively as both a satire and a thriller. The plot's pretty interesting, I just would've like to see a little more space devoted to it.

Still, this book is worth a read. It's fast-paced, well written, and remarkably perceptive. More than once I found myself laughing out loud at the absurdity of it all. If an avid non-smoker like myself can find himself rooting for a tobacco lobbyist, than anyone can.

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Summary: Brilliant and laugh-out-loud insight
Review: As a person who used to do what these characters do, I have to admit I laughed out loud as I blushed. The shameless and never-ending spin Buckley wrote about in _Thank You for Smoking_ was a painful - and probably inadvertent - prediction of what we've reduced public policy to in the last decade. Although I'm not as fond of Buckley's other novels, this book receives my highest honor: I buy it over and over again because I'm constantly loaning it to to people who never get it back.